Grow your own home

As the cost of moving house soars, Helen Davies finds it can make more sense to stay put and call in the builders

The plates are being cleared and the wine glasses topped up. The moment has come when homeowners kick back around the dinner table and talk turns to the housing market.

A decade ago, the conversation might have been on the relative merits of the Dordogne versus Provence. Then came the buy-to-let bonanza, but now the debate is increasingly attic versus basement; and, as imagination takes flight after a few more drinks, the potential for a yoga studio in the garden, how much better the back of the house would look with a double-height glass extension, or how suspended sleeping pods would be great for coping with the kids’ birthday sleepovers.

Improve rather than move is becoming the mantra of the Noughties. Some 330,000 domestic planning applications were submitted between March 2004 and March 2005, almost double the number a decade ago.